My Danish Sweetheart: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3

by William Clark Russell

We had half-masted a second Danish ensign after coming out from breaking our fast, and one needed but to look at the breezy rippling of its large folds to know that the wind was rapidly becoming scant. By one o'clock, indeed, it was blowing no more than a pleasant air of wind, still out of the north-east. The stormy, smoke-like clouds of the morning were gone, and the sky was now mottled by little heaps of prismatic vapour that sailed slowly under a high delicate shading of cloud, widely broken, and showing much clear liquid blue, and suffering the sun to shine very steadily. There was a long swell rolling out of the north-east; but the brows were so wide apart that there was no violence whatever in the swaying of the barque upon it. The wind crisped these swinging folds of water, and the surface of the ocean scintillated with lines of small seas feathering, with merry curlings, into foam. But it was fine-weather water, and the barometer had risen greatly, and I could now believe that there was nothing more in the rapidity of its indications than a promise of a pleasant day and of light winds.

I could have done nothing without Helga. Her activity, her intelligence, her spirit, were amazing, not indeed only because she was a girl, but because she was a girl who had undergone a day and two frightful nights of peril and distress, who had slept but little, whose labours at the pump might have exhausted a seasoned sailor. She seemed to know exactly what to do, was wise in every suggestion, and I could never glance at her face without finding the sweetness of it rendered noble by the heroism of the heart that showed in her firm mouth, her composed countenance, and steadfast, determined gaze.

At times we would break off to sound the well, and never without finding a fresh nimbleness coming into our hands and feet, a wilder desire of hurry penetrating our spirits from the assurance of the rod. Steadily, inch by inch, the water was gaining, and already at this hour of one o'clock it was almost easy to guess the depth of it by the sluggishness of the vessel's rolling, by the drowning character of her languid recovery from the slant of the swell. I felt tolerably confident, however, that she would keep afloat for some hours yet, and God knows we could not have too much time granted to us, for there was much to be done; the raft to be launched and provisioned; and the hardest part was yet to come, I mean the bringing of the sick captain from his cabin and hoisting him over the side.

At one o'clock we broke off again to refresh ourselves with food and drink, and Helga saw to her father. For my part I would not enter his berth. I dreaded his expostulations and reproaches, and, indeed, I may say that I shrank from even the sight of him, so grievous were his white face and dying manner—so depressing to me, who could not look at the raft and then turn my eyes upon the ocean without guessing that I was as fully a dying man as he, and that, when the sun set this night, it might go down for ever upon us.

There was but one way of getting the raft over, and that was by the winch and a tackle at the mainyard-arm. Helga said she would take the tackle aloft, but I ran my eye over her boy-clad figure with a smile, and said 'No.' She was, indeed, a better sailor than I, but it would be strange indeed if I was unable to secure a block to a yardarm. We braced in the mainyard until the arm of it was fair over the gangway, and I then took the tackle aloft and attached the block by the tail of it.

I lay over the yard for a minute or two while I looked round; but the sea brimmed unbroken towards the sky, and I descended again and again shuddering without control over myself, as I gazed at the little fabric of the raft and contrasted it with the size of the ship that was slowly foundering, and then with the great sea upon whose surface it would presently be afloat—the only object, perhaps, under the eye of heaven for leagues and leagues!

Our business now was to get the raft over the side. I should have to fatigue and perhaps perplex you with technicalities exactly to explain our management of it. Enough if I say that, by hooking on the lower block of the tackle to ropes which formed slings for the raft, and by taking the hauling part to the winch, we very easily swayed the structure clear of the bulwark-rail—for you must know that the winch, with its arrangements of handles, cogs, and pawls, is a piece of shipboard mechanism with which a couple of persons may do as much as a dozen might be able to achieve using their arms only.

When the raft was high enough Helga stood by the winch ready to slacken away on my giving the word of command; while I went to a line which held the fabric over the deck. This line I eased off until the raft had swung fairly over the water, and then called to Helga to slacken away, and the raft sank, and in a minute or two was water-borne, riding upon the swell alongside, and buoyed by the casks even higher above the surface than I had dared hope.

'Now, Miss Nielsen!' cried I.

'Oh! pray call me Helga,' she broke in; 'it is my name: it is short! I seem to answer to it more readily, and in this time, this dreadful time, I could wish to have it, and none other!'